Any discussion of the prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
Buildings typically include a number of schedulable devices, including light controllers, air conditioning units, security infrastructure, elevators, and so on. These devices are, over the course of time, subject to timed control for state changes such as activation and deactivation. For example, in the interests of containing building running costs, many devices are only maintained in an active state during peak times. To provide a very simple example, the majority of lights in an office building are typically deactivated outside of expected occupancy hours.
The process of scheduling a device, in essence, involves providing scheduling information to that device. The manner by which particular devices accept scheduling information varies considerably. This is not only an issue in terms of the data format in which devices accept information, but also in terms of the nature of acceptable scheduling information. In relation to the latter, some devices are able to store only a schedule for a single 24-hour period, whilst other devices are able to store a weekly schedule, and further devices have other schedule storage capabilities (or none at all).